California State Prison At San Quentin

San Quentin State Prison was closed indefinitely to new inmates and visitors Wednesday as officials fought to contain a raging gastroenteritis outbreak among roughly 500 convicts and staff members. The virus, which was first detected Dec. 28, has spread to all of the Marin County prison's housing units except a relatively isolated one with 15 inmates. On death row, about one-fourth of the prison's 620 condemned men have become sick, officials said.

Ground has not yet been broken on a new death row proposed at San Quentin State Prison, but the projected cost of the project has soared by nearly 80% for a compound that could be full only three years after it opens, according to a critical audit released Tuesday. If the facility is built as now envisioned, some condemned inmates would have to reside in cells with others rather than be imprisoned separately as they are now, State Auditor Elaine M. Howle reported.

Fourteen prisoners on San Quentin's Death Row filed a federal lawsuit in San Francisco Monday demanding the right to impregnate their wives or girlfriends through conjugal visits or artificial insemination. The lawsuit, which quickly drew a chilly reaction from both advocates of death penalty reform and prosecutors, claims the prisoners' constitutional rights are being violated because they are denied the right to have children.

With the latest death at San Quentin State Prison, suicide has supplanted execution as the second leading cause of death on California's death row. The leading reason for inmate deaths is natural causes. Tony Lee Reynolds' death Sunday was the 14th suicide -- one more than the number of condemned inmates executed in California since the state reinstated capital punishment in 1978. There are now 666 inmates on death row, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

A 78-year-old man who escaped from San Quentin prison in a makeshift kayak 20 years ago was arrested in Florida on bank robbery charges. Forrest Silva Tucker, whose criminal record stretches back to the 1930s, was captured last week in a school parking lot near Pompano Beach. He was jailed without bail in connection with a local bank holdup. In 1979, Tucker and two other inmates at San Quentin built a crude boat and set out from the beach.

A Death Row prisoner died after a fight with another condemned inmate in what San Quentin officials described as an increase in prison violence in the days before what was to be California's first execution in 23 years this week.

Twenty-Two men who have been sentenced in Orange County Superior Court are on San Quentin's Death Row awaiting execution. Half of them have had their sentences upheld by the State Supreme Court and are in the federal system. State prosecutors say that it could take four or five years to exhaust all their appeals, although the U.S. Supreme Court may streamline the federal appellate process for death sentences. William Charles Payton, 38, Garden Grove. Sentenced: March 5, 1982, by Judge Donald A.

This is California's other Death Row, just a steel cage with only nine cells and a narrow cement walkway in front known as "The Freeway." This is the Death Row for women, and the only inmate here is Maureen McDermott. The execution of Robert Alton Harris would be as disturbing to McDermott as to the 329 condemned male inmates at San Quentin. But while the men on Death Row can talk among themselves, McDermott must ponder her fate in isolation.

Ground has not yet been broken on a new death row proposed at San Quentin State Prison, but the projected cost of the project has soared by nearly 80% for a compound that could be full only three years after it opens, according to a critical audit released Tuesday. If the facility is built as now envisioned, some condemned inmates would have to reside in cells with others rather than be imprisoned separately as they are now, State Auditor Elaine M. Howle reported.

In spite of it all, Janice Gay wanted a traditional wedding. Determined to spruce up the drab prison cell that would serve as her chapel, she ordered flowers and a small, heart-shaped cake. She bought a long, lacy wedding dress--light blue, to match her groom's state-issue uniform.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's staff was aware that a new death chamber was under construction at San Quentin State Prison well before he ordered a halt to the project last month, a corrections official said Tuesday. Documents released at a state Senate committee hearing showed that construction began March 5, two weeks before it was approved by the Department of Finance. And Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation chief James E.

Prison officials are investigating the death of a condemned inmate found in his cell, a San Quentin Prison spokesman said. There was no sign that Marcelino Ramos' death Monday was due to foul play or drugs, Eric Messick said. Ramos, 49, was one of two people convicted in the 1979 execution-style slaying of a Taco Bell worker in Santa Ana. Ramos was the janitor at the restaurant when he and co-defendant Rueben Gaitan robbed the store. Katharyn Parrott, 20, was killed; the other worker survived.

San Quentin State Prison was closed indefinitely to new inmates and visitors Wednesday as officials fought to contain a raging gastroenteritis outbreak among roughly 500 convicts and staff members. The virus, which was first detected Dec. 28, has spread to all of the Marin County prison's housing units except a relatively isolated one with 15 inmates. On death row, about one-fourth of the prison's 620 condemned men have become sick, officials said.

Three days after receiving psychiatric care, a death row inmate hanged himself in his cell at San Quentin State Prison, a spokesman said Friday. James David Tulk, 46, who was sentenced to death for the 1990 rape and murder of a Redding woman, was found about 11:30 p.m. Thursday hanging from a bedsheet tied to his upper bunk, said Lt. Eric Messick. Even though they live alone, many death row inmates have double bunks, Messick said.

Despite a court order to improve medical care for inmates, San Quentin State Prison's health facilities and treatment practices are so harrowingly bad that many sick prisoners should not be taken there at all, independent examiners have concluded.

Killer Donald Beardslee will be executed early Wednesday barring decisions in his favor from last-minute appeals or Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's granting of clemency. At one minute after midnight Wednesday, San Quentin State Prison authorities are scheduled to execute Beardslee by lethal injection. Beardslee's lawyers claim he suffers from brain maladies that prevented him from thinking clearly when he killed Stacey Benjamin, 19, and Patty Geddling, 23, in 1981.

Condemned killer Bill Bradford seems perfectly willing to face his execution next month, but don't talk to him about moving out of his cell. At least not yet. The man who killed two aspiring models in 1994, and previously told judges he was ready to die, briefly sought late last week to halt his Aug. 18 execution. The reason: Guards were preparing to move him closer to the execution chamber from his cell on San Quentin prison's death row.

For as long as anyone here can remember, this quaint waterfront hamlet on the north shore of San Francisco Bay has brandished a pair of infamous calling cards: the state's oldest prison fortress and its storied death row where condemned inmates have met their ends by hanging, poisoned syringe or the dreaded gas chamber.

San Quentin State Prison's oldest death row inmate, 79-year-old Raymond Frederick Johns, has died, prison officials said Monday. Johns died Sunday at Novato Community Hospital of natural causes, though he long had suffered from cancer and respiratory ailments, said San Quentin spokesman Vernel Crittendon. Johns had been on San Quentin's death row since he was found guilty in 1995 of killing his wife and his girlfriend. He was transferred to the prison on Valentine's Day that year.

Plans for a $220-million expansion of San Quentin State Prison's death row are moving forward, despite opposition from a number of elected officials. Public comment will be sought this month on issues that should be addressed in the project's environmental impact report. Funding was included in this year's state budget for the project, which calls for construction of a 535,000-square-foot death row complex with 1,024 prison cells in the southwestern portion of the 432-acre prison.